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As part of the federal government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Eye Institute’s mission is to “conduct and support research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs with respect to blinding eye diseases, visual disorders, mechanisms of visual function, preservation of sight, and the special health problems and requirements of the blind.”

NEI Grantee Pawan Sinha, Ph.D. Receives Presidential Award

News Brief

08/20/12

Dr. Pawan Sinha has been selected by the White House to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Dr. Sinah is a professor of vision and computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The PECASE awards are the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. The award embodies the high priority placed by the government on maintaining the leadership position of the United States in science by producing outstanding researchers who will broadly advance science and the missions important to their agencies. As an award recipient, Dr. Sinha has demonstrated exceptional leadership potential at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. Of the many thousands of eligible young scientists, Dr. Sinha was among only 96 PECASE awardees.

Dr. Sinha receives NEI support for Project Prakash, a novel humanitarian and scientific endeavor. Project Prakash gives sight to children in India who have treatable blindness, usually from congenital cataracts and other reversible eye conditions. These children are old enough to describe what they see, allowing Dr. Sinha and his colleagues to study two key aspects of visual cognition: learning and recognition. In investigating these two processes, Project Prakash provides an opportunity to address issues of importance to basic neuroscience, as well as their applications in the clinical and artificial-intelligence domains.